zaterdag 13 oktober 2012

Out of the Dragon's Den

Governments all over the world seem caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. They're like the wanderer who realises that at the latest fork in the road he took the wrong turn and is now on the road to perdition. There's no going back, as he's beyond the point of no return. His means of survival will run out long before he'll reach the Last Homely House in the foothills of Debt Cliff Mountain, and he'll perish on the road in agony.
Before him looms the curtain wall at the other side of the Financial Abyss that is opening at his feet and widening fast. If he's desperate enough, he'll try to jump the gap. He's damned if he does and damned if he don't.

That's the situation our politicos and central bankers are facing when they gather in Frankfurt, in Threadneedle Street and inside the Marriner Eccles Building. They're scared to death by the Hydra of the ever developing credit crisis, but they're convinced they're holding the key to salvation: ink! By printing a Great Wall of Money, they expect to be able to bridge the gap and goad their sagging economies beyond the Marshes of Insolvency into the Land of Growth and Prosperity, if not for the commoners, then at least for the 1%. In the meantime, they're enjoying themselves by kicking empty ink cans farther and farther down the road.

In doing so, to their and our peril, they're acting in disregard of the dire warnings of the Financial Wizard of Teutonia. He's been waging a life-long war on the Inflatable Dragon, whose fiery breath once laid waste to Teutonia's lush valleys and scorched its wheel-barrows of paper money into heaps of smouldering resentment.

Now, what shall WE do? The destructive powers that are unleashed are too overwhelming to face head-on. There's no need for heroism, though. I think it will pay to keep one's head down and to put one's possessions away in a safe place, out of reach of the greedy clutches of the governing class and beyond the range of the creeping brood of the Keynesian dragon. Then, wait out the Storm.